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Association between Uranium Exposure and Thyroid Health: A National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey Analysis and Ecological Study

Besides specific, incidental radiation exposure, which has been associated with increased thyroid cancer risk, the effects of exposure to background radiation from uranium, a naturally occurring, radioactive, and ubiquitous element, on the thyroid gland has not been widely studied. We therefore inve...

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Autores principales: van Gerwen, Maaike, Alpert, Naomi, Lieberman-Cribbin, Wil, Cooke, Peter, Ziadkhanpour, Kimia, Liu, Bian, Genden, Eric
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7036996/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31979063
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17030712
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author van Gerwen, Maaike
Alpert, Naomi
Lieberman-Cribbin, Wil
Cooke, Peter
Ziadkhanpour, Kimia
Liu, Bian
Genden, Eric
author_facet van Gerwen, Maaike
Alpert, Naomi
Lieberman-Cribbin, Wil
Cooke, Peter
Ziadkhanpour, Kimia
Liu, Bian
Genden, Eric
author_sort van Gerwen, Maaike
collection PubMed
description Besides specific, incidental radiation exposure, which has been associated with increased thyroid cancer risk, the effects of exposure to background radiation from uranium, a naturally occurring, radioactive, and ubiquitous element, on the thyroid gland has not been widely studied. We therefore investigated the association between uranium exposure and thyroid health in the US. Using the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), we assessed the association between urinary uranium levels and thyroid-related antibodies, including thyroglobulin antibodies (TgAb) and anti-thyroid peroxidase (anti-TPO), in the general population. Secondly, we performed an ecological study of age-adjusted thyroid cancer incidence rates per state and sources of uranium exposure. We included 3125 eligible participants from the NHANES and found a significant association between increased TgAb and increased urinary uranium levels when analyzed as quartiles (p = 0.0105), while no association was found with anti-TPO. In addition, although no significant correlation was found in the ecological study, certain states had high age-adjusted thyroid cancer incidence rates and a high number of uranium activity locations and high uranium concentrations in water. The present study suggests that uranium exposure may affect thyroid health, which warrants increased sampling of soil and water in high-risk states.
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spelling pubmed-70369962020-03-11 Association between Uranium Exposure and Thyroid Health: A National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey Analysis and Ecological Study van Gerwen, Maaike Alpert, Naomi Lieberman-Cribbin, Wil Cooke, Peter Ziadkhanpour, Kimia Liu, Bian Genden, Eric Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Besides specific, incidental radiation exposure, which has been associated with increased thyroid cancer risk, the effects of exposure to background radiation from uranium, a naturally occurring, radioactive, and ubiquitous element, on the thyroid gland has not been widely studied. We therefore investigated the association between uranium exposure and thyroid health in the US. Using the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), we assessed the association between urinary uranium levels and thyroid-related antibodies, including thyroglobulin antibodies (TgAb) and anti-thyroid peroxidase (anti-TPO), in the general population. Secondly, we performed an ecological study of age-adjusted thyroid cancer incidence rates per state and sources of uranium exposure. We included 3125 eligible participants from the NHANES and found a significant association between increased TgAb and increased urinary uranium levels when analyzed as quartiles (p = 0.0105), while no association was found with anti-TPO. In addition, although no significant correlation was found in the ecological study, certain states had high age-adjusted thyroid cancer incidence rates and a high number of uranium activity locations and high uranium concentrations in water. The present study suggests that uranium exposure may affect thyroid health, which warrants increased sampling of soil and water in high-risk states. MDPI 2020-01-22 2020-02 /pmc/articles/PMC7036996/ /pubmed/31979063 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17030712 Text en © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
van Gerwen, Maaike
Alpert, Naomi
Lieberman-Cribbin, Wil
Cooke, Peter
Ziadkhanpour, Kimia
Liu, Bian
Genden, Eric
Association between Uranium Exposure and Thyroid Health: A National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey Analysis and Ecological Study
title Association between Uranium Exposure and Thyroid Health: A National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey Analysis and Ecological Study
title_full Association between Uranium Exposure and Thyroid Health: A National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey Analysis and Ecological Study
title_fullStr Association between Uranium Exposure and Thyroid Health: A National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey Analysis and Ecological Study
title_full_unstemmed Association between Uranium Exposure and Thyroid Health: A National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey Analysis and Ecological Study
title_short Association between Uranium Exposure and Thyroid Health: A National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey Analysis and Ecological Study
title_sort association between uranium exposure and thyroid health: a national health and nutrition examination survey analysis and ecological study
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7036996/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31979063
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17030712
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